“Eddie, I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me nothin’. Just go.”
Danny never called. Not on birthdays or on Christmas.
Fourteen years went by like that. Marcus grew into a tall kid with his mother’s eyes and a wicked shot that made grown men whistle. By senior year, he was averaging 18 points a game, and the whole town had stickers on their trucks for his team.
The state championship was a week away. I watched Marcus grab his hockey bag off the kitchen chair, and I thought about Rachel and how proud she would’ve been.
“You good, Dad? You’re staring.”
Yeah, he’d started calling me “Dad” when he was six.
“Just thinking,” I replied.
He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Marcus had been quieter in the last few months. Always on his phone.
On two occasions, I’d walked into the living room and watched him flip the screen face down against his thigh. I told myself it was nothing.
A girl, maybe, or senior-year stuff.
But I knew better.
The knock at my bedroom door came just after 11 a.m. I’d managed to get us a two-bedroom apartment when Marcus was 13.
I already knew something was wrong.
“Dad, are you up?” he asked.
I sat up against the headboard and clicked on the lamp.
“Yeah, buddy. Come in.”
He sat at the foot of my bed in the same way he used to when he was 11 and couldn’t sleep through a thunderstorm. Eighteen years old, six feet two, and still my kid.
“I’ve gotta tell you something. And I need you to hear me out before you say anything.”
My stomach tightened.
“Okay.”
“I invited Danny to the championship tomorrow.”
I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. That name hadn’t been spoken in our house in maybe a decade, and hearing it come out of Marcus’s mouth felt like somebody had flipped a switch in the dark.
“He found me on Instagram three months ago,” Marcus said, talking fast now. “He kept messaging me. Stuff like, ‘I want to make it right, son.’ And, ‘Let me be there for the big moments.’ He said he’s changed. He’s married now to a woman named Cheryl. He got rich in commercial real estate.”
“Three months?” I retorted. “You’ve been talking to him for three months and didn’t say anything?”
My son looked down at the quilt.
“I kept trying, but every time I opened my mouth at dinner, I chickened out. I figured if I waited any longer, you’d hear it from somebody else, and that’d be worse.”
“Scared of what, exactly?”
“Scared you’d think I was choosing him.”
I rubbed my hand over my face and tried to keep my voice level.
The clock on the nightstand read 11:14 a.m. Puck drop was in less than 18 hours.
“Marcus, do you know what time he called me the night your mom died?”
“Dad.”
“Two in the morning, and you were the only one there when I arrived.”
“I know the story.”
“Then you know what kind of man walks out on a child?”
My son finally looked up at me. His eyes were wet, but his jaw was set. That’s what got me. He wasn’t backing down.
“Dad, please try to understand. I’m not asking you to like him. I’m asking you to trust me,” Marcus said.
I wanted to forbid it, to tell him that the man didn’t get to walk into the most important night of his life and play biological father. The words were right there on my tongue.
But I looked at Marcus sitting on that quilt, and I saw the same kid I’d taught to tie his shoes on the kitchen floor, and I knew if I forbade anything tonight, I’d lose something I couldn’t get back.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“You invited him. He’s coming. I’m not gonna make a scene.”
“Thank you.”
Marcus stood up but paused at the door.
“Dad. I love you.”
“Love you too, kid. Get some sleep.”
My son closed the door behind him, and I sat there in the lamplight until the bulb felt as if it were burning a hole through my eyes. I didn’t sleep. Not one minute. I kept replaying things.
The emergency room trip when Marcus was six and split his chin open on the coffee table.
The science fair volcano that ruined our oven.
Every birthday, Christmas, and parent-teacher conference, I sat in those tiny plastic chairs by myself.
Around 5 a.m., I gave up and got out of bed. I walked into the living room and stopped in front of the bookshelf. There was a framed photo of Marcus when he was five, gap-toothed, holding a plastic hockey stick almost as tall as he was.
I picked it up and held it in both hands.
